


Dreams are just chemicals (but so is everything else you experience)

by Sif (Rosae)



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Everything is Okay AU, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Neglect, Not Canon Compliant, Other, sort of fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 10:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17506550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosae/pseuds/Sif
Summary: Dib was crazy, unfortunately. She'd checked every file, every log, every possible place and there was no sign that a boy named Zim had ever existed in their state, let alone their city or attended his school. There was no alternative explanation, other then the poor boy was just mad. Right?Right?





	Dreams are just chemicals (but so is everything else you experience)

**Author's Note:**

> So it's 2019 and I'm writing invader zim fanfiction. Well, it's 2019 and you're reading invader zim fanfiction, so you've got no right to judge.

The poor boy was crazy. 

Ms. Albright didn’t want to think he was, he was such a sweet boy really, and he was perfectly sane in many parts of his life. But the boy was crazy. He thought aliens were real and that one had attended his school. The boy he’d described apparently had had green skin, no ears, and pink eyes but nobody else at the school had cared. 

Zim. That was the name that was the root of this poor boy’s problems. Ms. Albright wanted to believe the boy was real, maybe Dib really had had a classmate with a skin condition that tinted his complexation, or had worn make-up to seem edgy. But there was no evidence that Zim had ever existed. The school had no records, the teachers didn’t seem to remember Dib having gone there either, the lot that Dib had claimed Zim had lived in didn’t exist and never had. 

When Ms. Albright had finally gotten Dib’s father in for a interview, he had shrugged his shoulders and said he’d never seen Zim. That he couldn’t even recall the name. Dib had quietly muttered that his father probably couldn’t recall his name either. It was the closest thing to progress she’d ever made. 

There had been a moment with Dib’s younger sister, Gaz, when Ms. Albright had wondered. The young women had paused when the name came up. Not that she’d been speaking to Ms. Albright anyways, she’d been focused on her gaming device as always. Gaz had looked up from her game, for the first time that Ms. Albright could recall, and she said softly.

“I was seven when all that went down. I- I remember Dib talking about Zim a lot. I could’ve sworn I met him quickly once or twice, and I remember after the accident Dib talked about never seeing Zim again. Dad says Zim wasn’t real though, that Dib just made him up for attention. That Dib’s crazy and that’s why he thinks Zim was real.”

The girl paused, and Ms. Albright fought to keep herself quiet. To not ask a million questions. It seemed almost as if the girl was trying to work up the courage to say something, but then she looked at Ms. Albright. Gaz’s look seemed to pierce her very soul, and the courage appeared to leave the young girl. She finished her sentence quietly.

“I don’t think Zim was real. But he made Dib happy.” 

Gaz didn’t speak after that. She returned to her gaming device and answered no more of Ms. Albright’s questions. Every now and again, Ms. Albright would go back and listen to that recording again. There was a moment every time when she almost thought maybe Zim had been real, maybe Dib had been right all along and he wasn’t crazy. Maybe a poor father had simply scared the two of them too much for them to be believed. But nothing else added up, so she’d shaken herself off and leave that train of thought behind. It had been two months since that conversation, and there was something about it that the psychologist couldn’t leave behind.

 

Dib was quiet these days. He was almost seventeen, and he had nothing left to say to her. She had very little left to say to him. There was nothing she could do to convince him Zim wasn’t real, even though he’d had his doubts in the past. For a period, she’d thought there would be a breakthrough where, when the two of them had talked about the accident, she almost convinced him if Zim was real he ought to be left to the past.

“He was so frustrating! And I know I took that fight too far with my water gun, but he had started it and I had to do something! He got a nasty burn on his chest and knocked me away into the street with his spider legs, that’s when the truck hit me. God I hated him so much, I was in the hospital for weeks.”

“So what did you do in response?” 

Dib’s tone slowed from his ranting, he seemed almost guilty. 

“I- Well I ignored him. Stopped trying to stop him. Stopped looking at him. Stopped talking to him. I pretended everything was normal and fine no matter what he tried. I thought I could do it for awhile. I thought I could be normal and happy and have normal friends and normal days. I think I was normal for a time there. It almost felt like revenge, with how sad he was.”

“Well it sounds like you had it all figured out. Why would you want him back if you could be happy once he was gone?”

That got her a pause, and Dib seemed to think about it. For a moment, Ms. Albright was hopeful. The boy looked down and moved the robotic leg he’d gotten after the accident.

“Because I was only happy when he was still there. Six months into all this, something happened to him. It was like he was sick, but he shouldn’t have been able to get sick. He lost all his energy, he stopped trying to get my attention, he stopped trying to do much of anything. I wanted to go talk to him, I know he’d never meant for it to go that far. Why do you think I call it the accident? He showed up at the hospital, after everyone else was gone. He thought I was asleep, and I was still pissed so I pretended I was. Zim apologized to me, he’s never done that before. Nothing we’d done had ever left permanent damage before.”

Dib took a deep breath, and the only word Ms. Albright could use to describe him was guilty. 

“I’m pretty sure he snuck into my dad’s lab and fixed the leg dad was making for me. I saw it beforehand and it was pretty garbage. I’ve checked the leg and there’s traces of Irken metals. Only reason it works this well. Why do you think all the other models don’t work quite like they should? Anyways, six months in something was wrong with him. I wanted to find out what was up, but I was still blaming him for what happened. So I said nothing and kept pretending to be normal. Then, three months later he stopped showing up to school. He’d had long absences before that, hardly saw him anymore anyways. But he came back, spent the day staring at me. I almost wanted to talk to him, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I swear he whispered goodbye when he left that day. After that he was gone. I went by where his house was, and nothing. I checked everywhere, every scanner, every log, asked everyone I knew who might be able to figure it out. Nobody knew. Hell I asked Tak out of desperation and she just got quiet and said she couldn’t find him either. Said nobody could. I was miserable after that, still am. Then only reason those six months were good was because it felt like I had finally found a way to win. Took a year for me to figure out that wasn’t what I had actually wanted.”

It had been the last time Dib had really talked to Ms. Albright. She wished there was more she could do, but he was so stable in other forms of life. He got good grades, got along well with his peers as long as none of them asked about Zim, he had a job now. There was no violence, no self-harm, nothing she could use to justify a more intensive treatment. Just the quiet depression, the melancholy that had settled over the boy whenever he was out of the public eye. It was something no drugs could chase away, no treatment could cure. The only thing that’d come close was when he’d picked up on some kind of signal on one of his machines. It was a fluke though, but for a moment Ms. Albright had seen the energy that he could have. 

Now the boy was mostly quiet, staring out the window, waiting for their hour to be up. It wasn’t as if she had anymore questions for him. All she could do now was be here and wait for when he was ready to move on. 

The hour passed, and Dib left. Other patients came in, and she helped them. They she could help at the very least. Until the last patient had left, and all she had left was uploading her notes. It was a quiet evening, much like any other. The computer whirred to life softly, and she made her way through quickly written notes, and one blank entry. It joined twenty one other blank entries. She had given up writing that the boy was quiet. There was no point in it. She wondered if there was even a point in him coming anymore. The boy was crazy, he would quite possibly never be fixed, but god she wished that weren’t true. She wished she could believe him. 

 

Then a knock sounded at her door. Startling, it took a moment for her to relax. She called over her shoulder,

“You can come in Mary, did paperwork get messed up again?”

Mary poked her head in, curly hair spilling through the doorway. Something was wrong with her expression though.

“Ms. Albright, I have a boy who says he’s here to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he said it’s about one of your other patients… He said his name was Zim? He’s quite… odd.”

It was as if someone had replaced her blood with liquid nitrogen. Ms. Albright was frozen for several long seconds. Tonight was dangerous, there was every chance this was a delusion gone too far, that she would die tonight. She should send the boy away, have Mary call the police, do anything. 

But god, she had always been too curious for her own good. She relaxed her muscles and smiled brightly at Mary.

“Oh I’m sorry dear, I completely forgot about him. I asked him to come in late, and I must’ve forgotten to put him in the appointment book. You can send him in.”

Mary didn’t seem to quite buy it, but she nodded anyways and ducked out. Bless her and her unnosy ways. An entertiny passed before there was a knock at the door. Bracing herself, Ms. Albright called out.

“Come in!”

She had been expecting, perhaps Dib wearing a costume of some kind. Or maybe an actor he had hired. Maybe even his sister. She wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t the seventeen year old boy who walked through her door.

Just as Dib had described, he had pale green skin that looked sickly, though no antenna or pink eyes. His ears were also missing, and he was shorter than Dib, though not by much. The boy had on a pink sweater and black pants, and he looked almost shy. She couldn’t speak. 

“Ms. Albright?” He asked politely, his hands wringing together nervously. 

She nodded.

He walked over and sat down in the chair across from her. His eyes fell down, as if he were at a confessional, before he spoke again.

“I’m sorry to come in so late, but, Dib told me he wasn’t going to come back here after we spoke again, and I thought maybe you were owed an explanation. You’ve been trying so hard for him all this time, and I think you helped more than you knew you did.” 

A pause, he looked up at her and smiled. She wondered if his teeth weren’t a bit more pointed then they should have been. Still, she was silent.

“Ah, where are my manners. So, I’m Zim. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about me from Dib. Though I’ll tell you now I’m not an alien, one from outer space or otherwise. But I used to pretend to be.”

The boy seem to take a breath in and sigh. Now though, Ms. Albright was interested. 

“See, I moved here back when I was twelve. I’d been in and out of foster homes for ages, my skin condition has a lot of complications, and my birth parents couldn’t afford the medical bills. They weren’t too great in general. I had to have hearing aids, I couldn’t shower for the longest time, I got sunburned the moment I went outside. Everyone treated me so delicately. When I finally moved here, I was expecting more of the same kiddy gloves.” 

Another breath, and his tone got fond.

“Then I met Dib. he accused me of being an alien not two minutes after I got into class. I should have been upset, and I was at first. But then at some point, I realized I loved it. He would fight me, hit and kick just like the other kids would. He called me an alien, but he treated me more normally then anyone else in my life.”

A breath, a pause, eyes dropping.

“Our fights kept getting bigger. I built props to keep the game going. I guess it was always a game for me, but I was twelve and I didn’t understand when things went too far. Then one day, we were fighting. He got in a lucky hit, and I startled. I shoved him on reflex, I never meant to push him in front of that truck. Not like the truck cared what my intentions were.”

The boy looked so sad, she almost spoke up to comfort him. But something was off about him. 

“I’m sure you know the middle part here, so I’ll skip that. My condition got worse, and so I got transferred to a new foster home for better treatment. I found out later that my paperwork never even got processed in that school before my transfer. A few other things went down, people I had trusted with my life turned their back on me. I was caught between worlds, and for the first time I was scared that I might not make it though. I kept thinking about finding a way to keep in contact with Dib, but after what had happened….”

Zim looked like he might cry, but something about him still left a feeling in Ms. Albright’s gut. he finished his thought after taking a moment.

“I thought that maybe we were better off without each other. Or at least, he was better off without me. After my transfer, after I finally got stabilized, hopefully for good this time, I decided I needed some time to myself. I needed to tie up loose ends I’d left for far too long, and I needed to figure out who I was. So I went off and I did just that. Ignored any contact from anyone I’d known before, just me and my dog. Changed phones, names, everything. It took awhile, but I think I managed in the end. And so here we are.”

 

Finally it seems, Ms. Albright found her voice.

“Why did you come back? It sounds like you had moved on with your life.”

At that, Zim smiled brightly. His teeth were still too pointy.

“I had, but I still missed Dib. I felt like it was the one loose end I never tied up. Still, I had mostly forgotten about it all until his sister contacted me last week. It’s funny, she tracked me down by my dog of all things. I was always good about getting him registered no matter what city I was in, and after talking with you she had remembered meeting him and his name, Gir, was pretty unique. So she went and followed Gir’s trail for a month until she found me. Told me Dib missed me, and that things with their dad had gotten worse. Asked me to come back to talk to him, so I did. Glad I did too, got to fix a lot of things with more people than just him.”

Ms. Albright regarded him for a long moment. It was the perfect ending to the story. It turns out Dib had never been crazy, only misled and neglected. Dib got to make up with a demon from his past, everyone seemed to have come out of it mostly stable. She knew there was something more here. The boy seemed to be getting ready to leave. It was almost half an hour past closing, and Ms. Albright was sure nobody else was left in the building. Mary wouldn’t remember this in the morning, she had always been so forgetful. There were no paper records of Zim having ever been here. No cameras, nothing. It didn’t even take a look to tell her that her recorder had malfunctioned. She spoke. 

“I won’t see any of you again after today, will I? Even if I go looking, Tak, Skooge, Gaz, they’ll all be gone. Some won’t have ever existed. Right?”

Zim regarded her carefully for a moment, his hair twitched, and then he smiled, it was soft this time though. Not for show. No malice behind it. His teeth were still took pointy.

“Yes, they’ll be gone too, by tomorrow morning, I imagine. There will be stories in the newspapers about Professor Membrene’s two children vanishing, but they won’t last long. I imagine someone will come by to question you. I can’t say I’d recommend honesty.” 

A pause, long and knowing this time.

“I’m sure you’ve already learned how little people like to believe the truth.”

Ms. Albright sighed, she knew it all too well. She watched as Zim stood from his seat, and walked to the door. His gloved hand touched the doorknob and she couldn’t help but call a question after him.

“Why tell me at all? Why risk any sort of trail?” 

Zim paused, considering her question. Then gripped the doorknob and twisted as he spoke.

“You always wanted to understand Dib. I found it in your case files again and again right before you called him crazy. I thought I would help, just as you did for so long. Besides, it seemed nice to give you a fitting story to tell, should you ever find someone to listen.” 

Then he opened the door and he was gone. All of them were. 

The next morning, all the records she’d collected on Tak and Skooge were gone. Every mention of them removed from her notes. Paper copies had vanished. Mary didn’t remember the night before, beyond recalling that a normal looking boy had showed up late. The newspaper headlines hit the day after, a little bit slow. Police showed up to question her, and when asked she’d told Zim’s story. The police made a report that Dib and Gaz had been kidnapped, but it went nowhere. The papers wrote a romantic story about fatherly neglect and a childhood friend coming back to save the day. Ms. Albright was never sure who was closest to the truth. 

The only thing she knew for sure, was when went she went to check the registration records of the city, there wasn’t a single dog named Gir in the files. 

She didn’t need to know anything else.


End file.
